Guest Blogger: Classroom Management

Here at New Teacher Talk, we're trying to find new ways to get you helpful, interesting, timely ideas for your teaching. Sometimes our posts are designed to get you thinking, others have helpful tips and strategies. As a new initiative, we'll be occasionally sharing posts from guest bloggers from different TC2 teacher preparation institutions as well as local school district partners to keep things fresh and relevant. Up first is a guest blogger from Minneapolis Public Schools!

Guest Blogger: Terry Peña, Lead Induction Mentor for the Minneapolis Public Schools PAR Mentor Program.

It is hard to believe that we are into already into April with May rapidly approaching.  As you enter the last quarter of the school year it is a good reminder to reflect on behavior management strategies that have been successful for you and your students and also strategies that you might want to begin to implement.  A strategy that we will look here at is called:  Positive Narration.  

Positive Narration:

• Positive narration enables you to create positive momentum
• Positive narration enables you to repeat your directions in a positive manner
• Positive narration enables you to demonstrate positive “with-it-ness”
• Positive narration enables you to recognize student behavior without the shortcomings of praise
• Positive narration is descriptive

When you use Positive Narration you are simply making a non-judgmental description of the behavior you are observing, providing examples of success for students to follow:

• Example:  Sophia is working with her partner using her whisper voice.
• Example:  Elisha is tracking me.

Start narrating within three seconds of giving directions. When positively narrating, you will simply make a three-part statement:

• Student’s Name: Jamal
• Verb: is
• Behavior: silently writing in his journal.

Use positive narration before you correct off-task students (3 positive then redirection).

Questions to consider and share in the comments:

1. Have you tried Positive Narration before?
2. If yes, what were the benefits and hesitations?
3. If no, when would be a good time to start?
4. Why is it so important to maintain rules and procedures the last quarter of the school year?

This strategy comes from the on line course called The No Nonsense Nurturer http://elearning.transformativeteachertraining.mrooms.net/ which is currently offered to probationary Minneapolis Public School teachers as a pilot.  Your thoughts and opinions of how the strategy worked for you are greatly appreciated.

partnering with parents

With spring parent-teacher conferences coming up for many of you, I've been thinking quite a bit about parent involvement in schools. I've always been a strong supporter of working with parents and communities to support student learning.

So I was interested in a recent article in the Washington Post, "Is Parent Involvement in School Really Useful" by Alfie Kohn, that really called into question some of my assumptions about parent involvement.While I don't agree with everything in the article, any time that I have to challenge my assumptions and think critically about my beliefs is a worthy exercise.

One of the points Kohn makes is that parent involvement as a benefit to students is a statement unquestioned. Schools and educators take this for granted, that this is a positive thing for students. And that when schools talk about parent involvement, the discussion is centered on a dichotomy of parent involvement: parents are either not involved or involved too much, which leads to perhaps an unrealistic ideal of parent involvement, some sweet-spot between "no involvement" and "helicopter-parent."But, for example, Kohn writes that research has shown that parents' help with homework does not improve learning outcomes. Interesting stuff.

What's often missing from the dialogue around parent involvement, Kohn argues, are the parent and student perspectives. And an examination to what kind of parent involvement really does make a difference in student learning. He's not saying that parent involvement is bad, but that schools need to reconsider how they work with parents to keep students at the center and therefore, to best meet the needs of students. And that's what it is all about, right, and what your PLC and PD and staff meetings are all centered on - meeting the needs of students in the most effective way.

Keeping these questions in mind, there are a number of resources to help you think about parent involvement in schools. There's a May 2011 issue of Educational Leadership that is stuffed with ideas about the integrated work of schools, parents, and communities (and several of the articles are available to anyone whether or not they are a member). The National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education has many resources at their site. The Harvard Family Research Project has a number of interesting initiatives happening, and I found their newsletter to be particularly relevant for teachers. Reading Rockets has more resources at their site. There's also twitter chat happening tonight (4/17) around this topic.

How do you work to engage parents in a way that keeps the engagement centered on the needs of students? What has worked for you? What is challenging?

tech talk - iPads

I came across some great resources for considering iPads in education.

For those of you ELA teachers out there, you might be interested in the twitter chat focused on iPads and English coming up on Monday, Apr 1 from 7-8 EST. Cassie Scharber, assistant professor of Learning Technologies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction as well as a Co-Director of the Learning Technologies Media Lab at the University of Minnesota, will host "The iPad invasion into English Education" at #engchat to focus on iPads and other technologies used in ELA instruction.

Speaking of iPads, I came across this article about iPads in Social Studies classrooms. The article shares a case study of a teacher's integration of iPads into instruction in Social Studies, and discusses some of the ways this technology can enhance instruction.

The point, too, is that iPads alone won't improve instruction, that it is what you do with them using effective instructional practices that transforms teaching and learning. Educators know this, of course, but the point is also stressed in the article "Students first, not stuff" in the latest Ed Leadership issue. Also in that issue is an article by Larry Ferlazzo with lists of great online resources for teachers. Another great resource is the wiki at Teach With Your iPad.

Do you have iPads at your school to use? What apps and resources have you found useful for teaching?

MN education fair - Apr 15

Those of you who are graduates of MN colleges and universities are invited to the MN Education Job Fair on Monday, April 15th at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Only MN college and university students and alumni are able to attend this event, and in order to attend, you must register through your institution's career services office.

On this page, you'll find a list of all institutions' career services center contact information to be sure you get registered for this important event.

Once you're registered, it's time to prepare for the event. The site has some helpful tips for preparation. You should make sure to have an updated resume and, if possible, you should complete application for your priority districts ahead of time. Develop a "plan of attack" - know the layout of the convention center and where the districts are that you want to visit. And plan a 30-second introduction to share about you and your skills. Practice this with anyone who will listen!

You can review some of the resume and interview tips that I've written about previously here.

Good luck!

standards-based assessment

Standards-Based Grading is a trend in education gaining more and more traction in schools. Many schools and districts are moving toward this system of grading, which references student achievement to specific standards within each subject area. This system utilizes backwards design to create assessment opportunities and then plan instruction to build student learning towards mastery of the standards. Below are some resources to get you started thinking about standards-based assessment if your PLC, school, or district is considering movig toward this practice.

Many schools in their initial work with standards-based grading draw upon the work of Robert Marzano, in particular his book Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading.

Teacher Mike Dappolone published an article "Launching Standards-Based Grading in a Points-Based World" in an issue of Educational Leadership. In the article, he discussed moving to standards-based assessment and, along with his own classroom grading reform, sought to make this change within his school. Also in Ed Leadership, there is a summary of a chapter from the book Becoming a Better Teacher by Giselle O. Martin-Kniep: Ch 3 - Standards-Based Curriculum and Assessment Design.

Teacher bloggers are a great place to get some "insider" knowledge about how standards-based assessment works. The blogger at "What it's Like on the Inside" has a couple of great posts on standards-based assessments here and here. Physics teacher Kelly O'Shea has posts about SBA here. Teacher Shawn Cornally has a great post about the thinking necessary for shifts to standards-based assessment here.

What are your go-to resources for learning about standards-based assessments?

critical thinking

Teaching students to analyze and evaluate information is a key focus for all teachers at all grade levels. Indeed, I work on this skill all the time with preservice teachers as much as I did teaching elementary school. Critical thinking skills has become a more targeted focus of instruction in the wake of the Common Core State Standards, and there are a number of resources to help you thinking about planning instruction to develop critical thinking skills in students.

• This Critical Thinking  video helps explain critical thinking skills for students.
• Many critical thinking resources are available at criticalthinking.org.
• Edutopia has some ideas for teaching critical thinking skills also.
• The Teaching Channel has this great video discussing using art to build critical thinking skills.
• One of my favorite literacy resources, ReadWriteThink, has a lesson plan on using whole-class dialogue to build critical thinking skills.
• The blog Partners in Education also includes a post with some good ideas about teaching students to ask questions to support critical thinking.

What resources do you use to help you plan instruction to build critical thinking skills in students.

planning for all

Around this time in the school year is when teachers really become confronted with the evidence that some students are not making the expected progress based on the intructional plan in place in the classroom. When I was first starting teaching, I knew that I needed to make some adjustments in my instruction and assessment to meet the varied needs of students, but I wasn't always sure what that was supposed to look like. It's usually in the winter that teachers really start to adjust their plans for differentiation to make sure that all students are receiving the instruction that they need to make progress in their learning goals.

And while you no doubt learned a lot about differentiation in your preparation program, it can sometimes be hard to figure out ways to put it effectively into practice. I'm no expert, but here are some ideas to help you think about differentiation to meet student needs.

One of the researchers writing a lot about differentiation, Carol Ann Tomlinson (1999), says: we can recognize differentiated instruction by a variety of classroom characteristics:

• Teachers begin where the students are.
• Teachers engage students in instruction through different learning modalities.
• A student competes more against himself or herself than others.
• Teachers provide specific ways for each individual to learn.
• Teachers use classroom time flexibly.
• Teachers are diagnosticians, prescribing the best possible instruction for each student. (p. 2)

When teachers plan to differentiate, they differentiate primarily in content (what they learn), process (how they learn), product (how they share their learning), and environment.

Some examples of differentiation by content might look like:

1. Having materials at different reading levels on the same topic.
2. Changing the types of items certain students complete.
3. Students complete different graphic organizers for the same text/topic.
4. Front-loading vocabulary and/or academic langauage, or providing pre-reading strategies for some students.

Examples of process differentiation include:

1. Presenting materials through both auditory and visual means.
2. Asking students different levels of questions.
3. Teaching content through center activities.
4. Providing students choice in task completed.
5. Varying the length of time students have to complete a task.
6. Offering hands-on activities to support some students.
7. Allowing students to work independently or in small groups.

Product differentiation is likely the easiest to consider. Examples include:

1. Giving students choice to complete a written report or create a webpage.
2. Having students determine the best way to share their learning.
3. Providing students with tiered assignments.

Addressing environment differentiation is about the levels of scaffolding, support, grouping patterns and cooperative learning experiences for students. It also means that teachers are considering their students' needs and their students backgrounds when selecting materials, tasks, and products. Some students may prefer to sit quietly, while others work better standing or moving. These are also examples of differentiation by environment.

Teaching Tolerance has some videos and prompts to help teachers think about differentiation. The Teaching Channel also has posted videos to model ways to differentiate. The Association for Middle Level Education has a great article about incorporating tech tools for differentiation.

What are some ways you plan for differentiation in your classroom?